smashET (an anxiety defusing game)

Winsche Studios’smashET

Anxiety is one of the biggest and most common mental health concern that we have to face. An issue that is slowly growing and it’ll won’t be long before it is the top issue for mental health. Any product, solution or tactic that helps with anxiety is greatly appreciated.

There are games that are not anxiety friendly, especially games from the retro era. They can be frustratingly hard or are distressing in some way. The countless games that don’t fall into those categories don’t cure anxiety. Really, they just make it easier to manage or distract away from it for a bit. Of course, there are games that will diffuse certain people’s’ anxieties. A game by Winsche Studios called smashET has been brought to my attention. It was scientifically created to cure anxiety which makes it unique and new. All there is for the game is:

+ Brief teaser trailer
+ some pieces of Artwork
+ a press release
+ a Kickstarter to support its launch (starts July)

Should I get my hands on a demo or the actual game of smashET then I’ll give a more in-depth analysis of it. Hopefully, there will be more information released when the Kickstarter launches. For the moment I just have some background knowledge and the company’s press release to work off from.

smashET: “The First Anxiety Curing Video Game”

A key study from May 2017 by the US National Library of Medicine which showed that monaural beats are significantly more effective than binural beats. Winsche Studios has taken this research for their game smashET. Their aim is to “ensure that they deliver disruptive innovations to gaming and digital applications.”

“We aimed to target states related to anxiety levels and general well-being, in addition to long-term and working memory processes, using monaural beats. Responses for the individual beat frequencies, positive effects on state anxiety were observed for all monaural beat conditions compared to control stimulation.”

Game Play

This 2D action-adventure game about an alien’s invasion of the Earth is played by launching monsters up in the air with the aim to hit and destroy the alien spaceship. The game sounds like a cross between Space Invaders, Breakout, and Crush the Castle (Angry Birds is a variant of the Crush the Castle game). It can be seen as ironic that monsters are being used to cure anxiety seeing how most monsters, both figuratively and literal, cause a ton of anxiety. Anyway, without gameplay or in-game screenshots, I’m not exactly clear on how this game plays.

smashET’s Aspects

The game’s AI is the next noteworthy attribute of the game as it learn’s how the player interacts with the game and adapts the difficulty level to “ensure the gameplay is stimulating and challenging” It’ll be interesting to see this concept once the game is released. It should also mean that anyone of any skill level should be able to get the most out of this game.

The music wasn’t the only aspect that the Studio looked into for this game. They did research into shapes and colours too for this game. The artwork is simple in design, which is exactly what you want from this type of game. For me, some of the best games of all time didn’t have complex graphics. It might seem too much on the cutesy side but should this game aspect work wonders we may see similar games that suit different audiences. If there’s anything that can be learned from industries, especially the gaming one, that should a concept work there will be copies.

The game sounds really intriguing and I certainly want to put it to the test, so stay tuned as I may have more information about this game later on down the line. The game will be released sometime later this year to the early parts of next on IOS, Android, and Xbox.

Extra Thoughts

So what are your thoughts about this game, does it interest you at this point? Do you have a game that helps you with your anxiety…or even a game that fills you with anxiety instead? Voice your thoughts, I love to hear them!

Blog Update

Presently things are moving on as smoothly as they can possibly be. I have had some spare time to commit to my blog recently. Being approached about this game gave an ideal opportunity to make a quick post during my break. The preparations for my next post are in place now and it is going to be a big topic, so stay tuned for that. Most of my ‘recent’ posts didn’t take too long to produce but I knew this next one was going to be more challenging to get done in a reasonable period of time. Many thanks for keeping tabs on my blog during this time. I am still about, for the most part, to answer your questions or look at upcoming projects.